


Something for the Pain

by Howland



Category: District 9
Genre: Community: smallfandomfest, Internal Monologue, M/M, Missing Scene, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-13
Updated: 2010-12-13
Packaged: 2017-10-13 16:10:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/139169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Howland/pseuds/Howland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The night before the break in at MNU Christopher reflects on his mission, his emotions, and the injured human in his care.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something for the Pain

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Smallfandomfest at LJ. Prompt:Needed
> 
> • It's been awhile since I've seen the film and I couldn't remember for sure if Wikus and Christopher were together the night before they broke into MNU. If they do, good. If they don't, just pretend I threw an extra day in there for kicks.
> 
> • Heads up on Some potentially squicky descriptions of Wikus shedding.

Night is dark, hot, and unpredictable in the district. At any moment a fight could break out anywhere, and sleep is rarely a thing that remains unbroken from dusk to dawn.

The distant angry clicks of two arguing prawns builds to the sound of meaty thuds and crowd chatter as blows are exchanged. Usually Christopher dreads the moment when those sounds will fall silent and yet another one of his kind will be dead or crippled for life. Tonight however he eyes the door to his shack disapprovingly and wonders if there’s any way for him to better fill in the gaps and mute the noise further. A pained moan escapes the human on his cot as he makes an aborted attempt to raise his injured arm to cover his ears.

Christopher knows that the human’s hearing is not nearly as good as his own, but the man’s pain and anxiety is keeping him at only a superficial level of sleep where almost any sound, however distant, causes him to stir.

What little information Christopher has on human biology tells him that sleep will be integral to whether or not this man lives through the changes being wrought upon his body. That knowledge makes him feel protective, makes him strive to do what he can to provide the man with a period of undisturbed rest.

He shifts uncomfortably in his chair at the impulse.

It eats away at him a little bit, the concern. He knows he shouldn’t care, shouldn’t give a damn whether this human lives or dies, but a part of him aches to make things right for this man, this ‘Wikus.’ He wishes he could just give him a few hours to sleep.

Christopher exhales and rests his head in his hands. The alien is well aware of the fact that he has too much empathy. It was precisely his inability to separate himself emotionally from others which kept him from moving up through the ranks any further than he did. He supposes he should be grateful; if he’d been on the bridge at the time of The Disaster, he would have died right along with his Superiors. There are times though when he wishes he had died, wishes that he had been hard-hearted enough to lead dispassionately, that he had been lucky enough to stand with the officers and face their death head on instead of this lingering, wasting madness which was now consuming the crew. He refuses however to let that depression destroy him. He will not go mad like the others, he will not let the weight of their existence here in this desert break his back as it has broken so many others.

He is strengthened by the fact that he finally has his chance to lead, to rectify his past mistakes and take his kin away from this hell, take them back home, back to a planet their children won’t recognize. Perhaps that means that now is the time to jade himself against the others, to become the cold, hard logical creature a Superior is supposed to be. Perhaps, but he can’t find it in himself to disassociate himself from the suffering of the rest of his people on this planet. He may have been bred from a Superior’s caste, but they are still all one race, one lost people standing on the brink of destruction and Christopher _knows_ that they need him now more than ever to be compassionate, to understand their pains and their struggles, and to carry all their feelings with him across the universe when he returns home for help.

He knows that he can do it. He’s proud to do it, proud to bear this burden for his kin. It’s essential that he does not fail.

Since encountering this human however he’s felt his damn empathy pulling him in yet another direction. Now Wikus needed him too, needed his help and his guidance every bit as much as his lost and broken people did. It was impossible to ignore the sounds of his pain.

He felt a sympathy for the man which was so strong it frightened him. He should feel nothing for the humans. They had been cruel and cold hearted when his people had needed kindness and assistance. But this one man, this one shattered figure was hardly responsible for the sins of a species.

With a gentle hand Christopher reaches out and takes a chunk of dead skin and muscle from Wikus’ bare shoulder. With great care pinches the tissue at a point well before what is left of the nerve endings and works the bloody chunk free, dropping it into the dirty plastic bucket next to the cot already half full of decaying flesh. The human whimpers in his sleep, but does not awaken

Easing back into this chair the alien contemplates the man who burst so abruptly into his life. It was little more than a day ago that Christopher held this man responsible for destroying all his hopes for salvation singlehandedly. Now Wikus’ knowledge of MNU headquarters is the only tenuous strand of hope Christopher has left to cling to.

A part of the alien wonders if his desire to care for the human stems from how much he needs the man’s information, but even as he turns the thought over in his head he rejects it. Wikus is fast coming to mean something more to him. The fear and panic in the man’s eyes makes Christopher long to take the pain away, to turn the half-breed back to the human he once was. He knows he can do it, if only the human can hold out a little longer. He needs some more time.

Christopher reaches for the blood stained blanket at the human’s feet but thinks better of it. Any touch to the man’s exposed nerves would be extraordinarily painful, and having the blanket placed over him could be more than enough to jerk Wikus awake.

Again the alien rests his head in his hands and tries to close his eyes and rest, but peace does not come.

He thinks about how sometimes Wikus’ metamorphosis reminds him of the shedding process children of his kind go through. His own son would endure the cracking, cramped, uncomfortable process of shedding carapaces some years from now as his body matured, and underneath all the layers would be a clean new exoskeleton which would protect him well from the world. Christopher tries to hang on to that image, tries to see the human’s transformation in a positive light; the man was growing armor which would shield him from the world. But it was a fleeting fantasy, a ridiculous notion. If Wikus tears and shouts and cries were anything to go by the human found nothing positive from his experience, and Christopher was not cruel enough to try and convince the man otherwise.

With a critical eye Christopher studied the mottled, torn skin over one side of the human’s body. With the same care as before, he leaned forward again and began to clean more of the dead tissue away.

He would reverse the changes as soon as he could, restoring the human to what he was, taking away his pain. It was a small price to pay if the man came through on his end of the bargain tomorrow. Although after spending time with Wikus, a corner of his mind was nagging that he would give the human what he wanted even without the payment of the fuel. He would give the man what he needed just because he couldn’t bare to see another creature in pain. Not his kin, and not Wikus.

It’s a discomforting thought so Christopher puts it aside and focuses all his energies into the moment and the task at hand, using the night to steel himself against tomorrow.

All he can do tonight is nurse the man through the change. A piece of skin and muscle four inches in diameter comes free under his fingers and he disposes of it, wiping his hands off on the blanket before moving to another ragged portion. He could do this. It would have to be enough for now, to clean the dead tissues from this fragile human body as they sloughed off. The fate of his people would hinge on the outcome of tomorrows quest, but for tonight he wanted for nothing more than to make Wikus as comfortable as he could.

Christopher was not a miracle worker, but for tonight he could give the human what he needed.


End file.
